I haven't found anything in the DMCA that would enforce a click-through EULA. The SSSCA hasn't been passed. And, like I said, UCITA has only been adopted by 2 states. It's possible that more will adopt it, but it hasn't happened yet, and there has been some significant resistance to it since it violates some basic tenets of contract law.
The software industry heavly-lobbied for legislation (and got it, of course) that basically makes its products legally without warranty.
Which legislation are you talking about? The only law I know of that would accomplish this for them is UCITA, and that's only been adopted by 2 states.
If you don't live in one of the two UCITA states, then it is hardly a settled issue of whether the EULA is enforceable or not. The fact that most retailers won't accept a return if you don't agree to the EULA doesn't help their case either.
They can not tell us how to use our equipment as long as we are not doing anything illegal!
Which is why they need this law, so that it *will* be illegal for manufacturers to sell hardware that doesn't contain the proper "protections" for the copyright industry. So you can stick with your current stuff and be fine, but if you ever want to upgrade...
A few machines making millions of copies, or millions of machines making a few copies still leads you to a situation in which millions of copies exist. If consumer-grade writers could duplicate DVDs, then it would be just as bad as having industrial-grade duplicators on the loose (which they are already, of course). Could you provide a link to something that backs up your claim that consumer drives can make bit-for-bit copies?
Perhaps you could pound some sense into them. If they offer people a good product at a fair price, they don't have to worry about "piracy." It just won't be worth it to people to go to the effort of obtaining a copy if they can get the real thing for a decent price. Same goes for the RIAA. But they don't want to listen to such thinking because it means they would have to stop gouging their customers and saddling them with ridiculous restrictions.
Someone already called you on your mistake, but I thought I'd fill you in further. You can't create bit-for-bit copies of DVDs because there are no consumer-grade DVD writers that can write to the key-sectors of the DVD. That's why you have to sign the "blood contract" with the DVD Forum to get the equipment that *can* create DVD duplicates. DeCSS lets people get around this limitation by decrypting the DVD, which allows you to either watch it, or convert it to another format and/or compress it (such as with Divx) and burn it to CD or DVD. That's why they're after DeCSS. The bit-for-bit crap seems to have perpetuated itself through the ignorance of a good portion of the/. population.
It would be more like "Let's buy them out and then building this stuff into PCs will be in our own best interests. Oh, and we would get to fire Jack too."
It'll probably get whacked down by the big boys if it becomes a nuisance. I remember reading a while back about the law firms for some big industry types getting some law passed to prohibit law students from helping low-income families deal with legal paperwork and filings in order to save their homes from being destroyed to make way for factories and industrial plants. The students were making it too easy for the families to fight the big companies, so they just got the practice outlawed. Suddenly the resistance dropped dramatically and they could move in a their leisure.
What about posting a letter for the purpose of receiving legal advice? Wouldn't that have to be allowed? Are they going to say you can't show it to your attorney? You can't show it to non-attorneys? You can't post it on a bulletin board with a note attached asking if anyone can advise you on a course of action? You can't post it on a website with your own comments attached and a request for legal advice? Where would the line be drawn, and why?
I realize that you posted in jest, but civil disobedience isn't about completely ignoring bad law, just orderly refusal to obey those parts of the law that are ill-concieved.
Unfortunately, copyright law is almost entirely bad at this point. Mainly due to incredibly long terms and overly broad protections. By refusing to obey those portions alone, you've pretty much tossed copyright out the window. Should we just adhere to the original copyright terms? Anything more than 28 years old is fair game? Do what you like with what you own, regardless of what the DMCA says? How would you propose to handle it?
Civil disobedience would be to use Microsoft Office on your laptop and desktop.
How is this different from copying DVDs? In both cases you're depriving the corporation of potential additional sales, which is what you consider to be theft.
This is the same reason you should never use a debit card to make purchases online unless it offers the same protections that a major credit card offers. Many don't. Some do. Be sure before you use it online.
The only thing new paypal did was bring the nightmare of credit processing to the normal joe.
And then they coupled it with the most incompetent, unorganized customer service department you can imagine so that it's practically impossible to get even stupid non-issues fixed.
There is "access" in the sense used by the DMCA. You're gaining access to the multiplayer part of a Blizzard game by using a tool that allows you to bypass Blizzard's serial code verification (which would certainly a technological measure under the definition used by the DMCA).
As for the reverse-engineering, I agree that bnetd should be legal, but this is what I was talking about when I said it was the same as the DeCSS case. DeCSS has what I would consider "substantial non-infringing uses", as does bnetd. However, the court didn't seem to be especially swayed by that argument, and I don't expect much difference with this case. The part of the DMCA covering reverse engineering is weak at best, as it includes the phrase "to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law other than this section."
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
It says nothing about encryption, so it doesn't matter whether Blizzard's serial code system is a form of encryption or not. It also doesn't matter whether it controls access in the same way that CSS controls access to DVDs. As long as it controls access in some manner, it's covered.
Live365 shows how many listening hours each station gets (actually it shows them as a range, kinda like 1-5 stars, with each star representing some number of users). Many stations have well over a thousand listeners at any given time. Many stations have over 10,000 listening hours a month. That's a lot of money they could end up paying if these rates go through.
I didn't see any distinction made between individually run stations or any other webcaster. It looked like the rates for any webcast were the same. The only distinction was between those that simultaneously rebroadcast and those that don't. The fact that they aren't simultaneously rebroadcasting an AM/FM station doubles their rate.
I think Blizzard's point is that bnetd is a circumvention device that allows people to bypass their serial code system that controls access to their games when played online. Thus the bnetd guys would be trafficking a circumvention device, exactly the same reasoning behind DeCSS. Sucks, but I think they have a pretty decent case under the DMCA. If bnetd checked serial codes, then their case would probably go out the window. But I don't think there's any way for them to do such checking, so they're probably screwed. Sucks, huh?
There goes webcasting. Shoutcast and Live365 each have hundreds of stations. Maybe only 50 or so have a high volume of traffic, but any way you cut it, these rates will kill webcasting. But that's their intent of course, so it makes perfect sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't found anything in the DMCA that would enforce a click-through EULA. The SSSCA hasn't been passed. And, like I said, UCITA has only been adopted by 2 states. It's possible that more will adopt it, but it hasn't happened yet, and there has been some significant resistance to it since it violates some basic tenets of contract law.
The software industry heavly-lobbied for legislation (and got it, of course) that basically makes its products legally without warranty.
Which legislation are you talking about? The only law I know of that would accomplish this for them is UCITA, and that's only been adopted by 2 states.
If you don't live in one of the two UCITA states, then it is hardly a settled issue of whether the EULA is enforceable or not. The fact that most retailers won't accept a return if you don't agree to the EULA doesn't help their case either.
They can not tell us how to use our equipment as long as we are not doing anything illegal!
Which is why they need this law, so that it *will* be illegal for manufacturers to sell hardware that doesn't contain the proper "protections" for the copyright industry. So you can stick with your current stuff and be fine, but if you ever want to upgrade...
You could argue the Sept 11th hijackers were practicing civil disobedience using your flawed logic.
Actually, they would be at the insurrection stage I think.
A few machines making millions of copies, or millions of machines making a few copies still leads you to a situation in which millions of copies exist. If consumer-grade writers could duplicate DVDs, then it would be just as bad as having industrial-grade duplicators on the loose (which they are already, of course). Could you provide a link to something that backs up your claim that consumer drives can make bit-for-bit copies?
Perhaps you could pound some sense into them. If they offer people a good product at a fair price, they don't have to worry about "piracy." It just won't be worth it to people to go to the effort of obtaining a copy if they can get the real thing for a decent price. Same goes for the RIAA. But they don't want to listen to such thinking because it means they would have to stop gouging their customers and saddling them with ridiculous restrictions.
Someone already called you on your mistake, but I thought I'd fill you in further. You can't create bit-for-bit copies of DVDs because there are no consumer-grade DVD writers that can write to the key-sectors of the DVD. That's why you have to sign the "blood contract" with the DVD Forum to get the equipment that *can* create DVD duplicates. DeCSS lets people get around this limitation by decrypting the DVD, which allows you to either watch it, or convert it to another format and/or compress it (such as with Divx) and burn it to CD or DVD. That's why they're after DeCSS. The bit-for-bit crap seems to have perpetuated itself through the ignorance of a good portion of the /. population.
I can't think of anything that would cause a code-fork faster than copy protection making it into the kernel :)
It would be more like "Let's buy them out and then building this stuff into PCs will be in our own best interests. Oh, and we would get to fire Jack too."
It'll probably get whacked down by the big boys if it becomes a nuisance. I remember reading a while back about the law firms for some big industry types getting some law passed to prohibit law students from helping low-income families deal with legal paperwork and filings in order to save their homes from being destroyed to make way for factories and industrial plants. The students were making it too easy for the families to fight the big companies, so they just got the practice outlawed. Suddenly the resistance dropped dramatically and they could move in a their leisure.
What about posting a letter for the purpose of receiving legal advice? Wouldn't that have to be allowed? Are they going to say you can't show it to your attorney? You can't show it to non-attorneys? You can't post it on a bulletin board with a note attached asking if anyone can advise you on a course of action? You can't post it on a website with your own comments attached and a request for legal advice? Where would the line be drawn, and why?
I realize that you posted in jest, but civil disobedience isn't about completely ignoring bad law, just orderly refusal to obey those parts of the law that are ill-concieved.
Unfortunately, copyright law is almost entirely bad at this point. Mainly due to incredibly long terms and overly broad protections. By refusing to obey those portions alone, you've pretty much tossed copyright out the window. Should we just adhere to the original copyright terms? Anything more than 28 years old is fair game? Do what you like with what you own, regardless of what the DMCA says? How would you propose to handle it?
Civil disobedience would be to use Microsoft Office on your laptop and desktop.
How is this different from copying DVDs? In both cases you're depriving the corporation of potential additional sales, which is what you consider to be theft.
I know I've had submissions that were along those lines get rejected, even though they were better than some of the crap that gets posted.
This is the same reason you should never use a debit card to make purchases online unless it offers the same protections that a major credit card offers. Many don't. Some do. Be sure before you use it online.
The only thing new paypal did was bring the nightmare of credit processing to the normal joe.
And then they coupled it with the most incompetent, unorganized customer service department you can imagine so that it's practically impossible to get even stupid non-issues fixed.
There is "access" in the sense used by the DMCA. You're gaining access to the multiplayer part of a Blizzard game by using a tool that allows you to bypass Blizzard's serial code verification (which would certainly a technological measure under the definition used by the DMCA).
As for the reverse-engineering, I agree that bnetd should be legal, but this is what I was talking about when I said it was the same as the DeCSS case. DeCSS has what I would consider "substantial non-infringing uses", as does bnetd. However, the court didn't seem to be especially swayed by that argument, and I don't expect much difference with this case. The part of the DMCA covering reverse engineering is weak at best, as it includes the phrase "to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law other than this section."
Hmm... but you can't download them there. How many people actually manage to download these releases?
This is what the DMCA says:
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
It says nothing about encryption, so it doesn't matter whether Blizzard's serial code system is a form of encryption or not. It also doesn't matter whether it controls access in the same way that CSS controls access to DVDs. As long as it controls access in some manner, it's covered.
Scratch the part about the thousand listeners at any given time. That was a mis-paste on my part.
Live365 shows how many listening hours each station gets (actually it shows them as a range, kinda like 1-5 stars, with each star representing some number of users). Many stations have well over a thousand listeners at any given time. Many stations have over 10,000 listening hours a month. That's a lot of money they could end up paying if these rates go through.
I didn't see any distinction made between individually run stations or any other webcaster. It looked like the rates for any webcast were the same. The only distinction was between those that simultaneously rebroadcast and those that don't. The fact that they aren't simultaneously rebroadcasting an AM/FM station doubles their rate.
I think Blizzard's point is that bnetd is a circumvention device that allows people to bypass their serial code system that controls access to their games when played online. Thus the bnetd guys would be trafficking a circumvention device, exactly the same reasoning behind DeCSS. Sucks, but I think they have a pretty decent case under the DMCA. If bnetd checked serial codes, then their case would probably go out the window. But I don't think there's any way for them to do such checking, so they're probably screwed. Sucks, huh?
I listen to Live365 and Shoutcast stations fairly often. Let's see what will happen to them:
This applies to a station with a medium-sized listener base.
(1000 listeners * 12 songs/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/yr * $.0014 Fee/performance) * 1.09 Ephemeral License Fee = $160,413.12/yr
OUCH!
There goes webcasting. Shoutcast and Live365 each have hundreds of stations. Maybe only 50 or so have a high volume of traffic, but any way you cut it, these rates will kill webcasting. But that's their intent of course, so it makes perfect sense.